Viewpoint: Preventing high emissions from old coal busting the UK’s carbon budgets

Documents
recently released by
the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) reveal that the government’s
“central scenario” for UK power generation over coming decades could see legally-binding
carbon targets breached because of significant carbon emissions resulting from
an unexpectedly large role for old coal-fired power stations right through to
2030.

The
Committee on Climate Change (CCC) who advise the government on what is required
to hit carbon targets have warned for the past three years that in order to
stay within the UK’s legally-binding carbon budgets all coal-fired power
stations in the UK must either be fully abated with Carbon Capture and Storage
(CCS) technology, or shut down, by “the early 2020s.”

“We were clear in our report that there can be no role for
conventional coal generation in the UK beyond the early 2020s.”

But
in the “central
scenario”
for DECC’s 2012 energy projections, the government foresee there will still be
10.3 GW of coal-burning power plant on the system in 2024, and 7.1GW in 2029. Though
generation itself is expected to tail off towards the end of the decade as the
Treasury’s carbon floor price kicks in.

Carbon
Capture and Storage (CCS) plans abandoned

For
a long time, Ministers have claimed the answer to the problem of high emissions
levels from both coal-fired power stations and gas plants would be Carbon
Capture and Storage (CCS) technology.

The
coalition agreement commits the government to four CCS coal demonstration
projects. But in recent weeks it has been reliably rumoured that
Ministers have cut this to one or two projects, which may be on either gas or
coal plant. It also emerged the
UK lost EU funding for proposed CCS projects. So whilst the government has
always indicated it expected a bigger role for CCS through the 2020s and into
the following decades, these plans now look extremely shaky.

When
Ed Davey launched the
government’s “CCS roadmap,” he said it “sets out how we will achieve our goal
of seeing commercial deployment of CCS in the UK in the 2020s.” But now we know
that in the government’s “central scenario” they are projecting that between
2017 and 2030 there will only be one
small-scale CCS coal demonstration project in operation in the UK. Equally, the
same scenario document projects there will only be 1.1GW of gas CCS by 2026
rising to 2.7GW of gas CCS by 2030.

This
vision contrasts strongly with the CCC’s latest “illustrative
scenario”
(p5) in which they project 15% of the fossil fuel mix of the UK power sector would
be CCS by 2030. This equates roughly to 69TWh, which at base load would be
around 9GW. So the CCC figure sees three times more CCS than in the government
scenario.

All
this is particularly significant just now because a key defence mounted by the
Energy Secretary Ed Davey in defending the consistency of burning fossil fuels
with the carbon targets has been that CCS could keep emissions down.

A
solution

DECC’s projections suggest that despite
the remaining capacity the rising carbon floor price may provide a limit to
coal generation, at least beyond the mid 2020’s. But that limited backstop depends
on the Treasury sticking with its plans to relentlessly drive up the price of
carbon irrespective of what happens in the wider carbon market. Anyone who has
paid attention to the debate over fuel duty, and recent statements from the
Chancellor, will know that is not a given.

To prevent excessive emissions
from coal-fired power stations like Drax in the 2020s and beyond, the
government’s new Energy Bill should state clearly that significant life
extensions through re-fits or upgrades to old coal-fired power stations will be
covered by their new Emissions Performance Standard (EPS).

Right now, the government are
proposing that these new emissions controls would only apply to newly built coal
burning projects, but the EPS should clearly be expected to cover all those
coal plant seeking to continue operation in coming decades and not just new
ones.

Viewpoint pieces reflect the view of the author and/or his or her organisation.

The Energydesk team is away over Christmas so whilst the magic of technology allows these stories to be published in our absence we won't be able to respond to comments until 7 January - however we will then do our utmost to get up to speed. Many apologies in advance, Merry Christmas & Happy New Year.

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